Posts from the ‘Rail’ Category

Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July 2018
The first detailed plans for new units to be built on government-owned land along the Metro Northwest train line have been released. Tallawong Station south in Rouse Hill will get about 1100 units in an area near The Ponds, with buildings up to 8 storeys tall. The plan includes parking for 1015 cars and 1210 bicycle spaces. One of the “key principles” of the development is to encourage greater use of cycling by residents. A minimum of 5% of the units will be used to provide affordable housing for at least 10 years.

Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 2018
Seven hundred apartments will be built on a large block around a new rail station in inner-Sydney Waterloo, government documents show. The Waterloo “Metro Quarter” proposal by the government’s UrbanGrowth Development Corporation and Sydney Metro, made available on Wednesday, includes four residential towers of 29, 25, 23 and 14 storeys.

The Conversation, 14 May 2018
More than half a century has passed since high-speed rail (HSR) effectively began operating, in Japan in 1964, and it has been mooted for Australia since 1984. I estimate that the cost of all HSR studies by the private and public sectors in Australia exceeds $125 million, in today’s dollars. But the federal government is now less interested in high-speed rail (now defined as electric trains operating on steel rails at maximum speeds of above 250km per hour), and instead favours “faster rail” or medium-speed rail.Read more

The Conversation, 24 April 2018
Public discussion of rail links to airports has been narrowly focused on the idea of a single line and where to run it. In Melbourne, the politics of this debate has so far prevented a railway from being built, because it is not possible for one line to meet all of the landside access needs of the airport. The issue of rail access for a new western Sydney airport has also not been resolved.Read more

Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 2018
Premier Gladys Berejiklian would not be drawn on when the significantly delayed Sydney light rail project would be finished, as the government faces a legal battle with the Spanish subcontractor building it. When asked in question time on Tuesday about the delays, Ms Berejiklian did not provide details around when the project connecting the CBD to the eastern suburbs would be completed. It was due to be finished in 2019.Read more

News.com.au, 1 March 2018
THE NSW Government has an embarrassing problem with $2 billion worth of new trains that are on order — they’re too wide to go through the tunnels. Whereas the current trains are 2.9m wide, the new models being built in South Korea are 20cm wider. That small difference could have a big impact.Read more

The Age, 7 March 2018
It’s 8.56am and Victoria Rogan is already anxious. She’s on the first leg of a hellish, two-hour journey from her Wyndham Vale home to Monash University in Clayton: a cross-city trip involving a car, two trains and a bus.Read more

The Guardian, 10 January 2018
The New South Wales Government has announced a review of the Sydney public transport fiasco that left large chunks of the city’s train network in chaos. The state’s transport minister, Andrew Constance, said on Wednesday that he had asked transport officials to provide a report on the delays that have crippled the network since Monday.

ABC News, 25 October 2017
An internal brawl in the Nationals over the Federal Government’s Inland Rail project is threatening to fracture the party, two days before its leaders could lose their jobs. All Queensland Nationals backbench MPs and senators have put their names to a letter to Infrastructure Minister Darren Chester, demanding a rethink on how the project is being run.

Wednesday October 25th 2017, Time: 12 pm – 1 pmSynopsis
Dr Michael Kane will present the current efforts in Queensland to electrify land transport. His will also take us through some of his thoughts on whether the goal of 100% renewable land transport is feasible. He will discuss potential policies and practices that might make this possible.

Reflecting on this what will be interesting is that the intensification of road transport will also occur with electric AVs but not sufficiently to impact on peak major trunk PT. Lesser traditional PT and local private car trips will likely be replaced by a hybrid version of Uber/taxis/on demand transport. Private AV car use will have to be subject to road pricing or the road network will grind to a halt. What is also challenging from another perspective is that late night PT trunk is likely to unviable outside very large cities and slow and inefficient rail/light rail will also come into question as to why they shouldn’t be converted to ‘shared’ AV only highways (existing rail lines in Perth are all good performers). It will be a much more competitive environment in many ways, and everyone’s mode loyalties are going to be challenged. Trunk PT will also have to drop in price to remain competitive which should be possible with the dropping of subsidised non-trunk services.

With the recent pricing on hydrogen fuel cells (coming from 100% renewables) for buses and trucks is it realistic to assume to assume that all land transport is capable of transitioning technology wise for no additional vehicle costs from some point in the next decade? While there may be some infrastructure and industry changeover costs, the real challenge will be changing people’s mind-sets.

About the Presenter

Dr Michael Kane is the Director of Innovation and Economic Strategies at Economic Development Queensland. Dr Kane’s role is to support EDQ’s innovative planning and development initiatives relating to regional development, sustainable energy/water, housing, knowledge economy and transport. Michael has worked with EDQ (and Urban Land Development Authority) since 2009 in sustainability, innovation and strategy advisory roles. Before this he was an adviser for the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure in Western Australia on land development, transport and strategic planning. He has a PhD from Curtin University with his thesis relating to knowledge economy, urban and transport planning.